Who cares?

Is it surprising that people are worried about the quality of frontline healthcare assistants when they are paid peanuts, recruited with little or no training and expected to perform intimate tasks with often confused patients and service users?

Private domiciliary care agencies, residential homes and other providers are often under so much financial and time pressure that they expect their staff to spend minimum time with a patient whilst even paying their own mileage and expenses out of, at best, minimum wage.

How can we carry on as a so called resident in the cradle of civilisation when we subject the old, the sick and the vulnerable to a quality of life that is less than most of our pets receive?

I have also heard that some staff have to pay for their own training. So when you do the arithmetic is it hardly surprising that the job attracts people not up to the task?

Could it be that we give little value to those who don’t contribute any more to the economy?

Couple this with the fact that there are tens of thousands of young people in our society who are the primary carers for relatives who are chronically sick or disabled, whose childhood is cut short and therefore saving the state a fortune whilst sacrificing large parts of their own development.